For half a second, I feel like I may have the upper hand, then a boot smashes into my knee and my legs fucking buckle. Concrete greets me with open arms, and I hit hard, breaking a tooth in the process.
“OH FUCK!” I shout just as my world explodes into violence.
Kicks come out of nowhere, connecting with my ribs, my back, hitting me so hard it feels like they’re taking out a kidney. I curl into a fetal position, protecting my head, even though each hit feels like a lightning bolt of agony that rips through my body.
Laughter echoes above me.
“Moseley says hello.”
The name slices through the chaos like a blade. I know it, but only because Rich told me about it the last time he called me. He’s some asshole in Fernley who thinks he owns the whole town. But how did he get me in here? I’m not even a part of the club yet.
A savage kick drives into my midsection, forcing a choked, broken sound from my throat. I try to roll out of it, but a heel crashes into my spine, pinning me in place.
Something cracks, but I do not know what.
Still, I fight, even though my breathing feels like I’m choking on jagged glass because that is the only language this place respects.
I grab backwards blindly, fingers locking around someone’s ankle. I yank with everything I have left, and one of them goes down hard. I scramble to my knees, vision blurring, and manage to land one final punch before fists and boots crash into my skull again, knocking me back to the ground.
The corridor spins recklessly.
The blows never stop. They blur together, pain compounding into something distant and unfamiliar.
Then I feel the shank dig into my side, nicking my lung. They pull it out and plunge it a few more times on various parts of my body before swiping it across my cheek, the blood oozing down my face in rivers.
This is it.The thought arrives with terrifying clarity as breathing becomes a struggle, and the fight in me starts to wane.
I’m going to die here on this prison yard.
Blackness creeps in, dragging at my consciousness with relentless force. Every breath is a wet, ragged struggle, my body barely responding anymore.
But I cling to what little life I have left.
Because of Poppy.
Because of the idiots I call brothers back home that somehow dragged me into this mess.
Because I’m too damn stubborn to give Moseley the satisfaction of taking my first ride away from me.
Alarms erupt from somewhere far away, but I barely hear them. They sound like whispers more than calls of alert.
I drift in and out of a strange, endless void, pain fading into numbness as darkness keeps reaching for me, promising relief from the pain and torment my body has gone through.
Every time I start to slip, something pulls me back.
Her.
Always her.
Poppy’s face burns through the black void like a beacon, begging me to not abandon her like everyone else.
Hold on.
Just hold on, Wesley.
It should be my own voice begging for me to stay, but it’s not. It’s hers. The ghostly sound of it cripples me.
So, I grasp on to the seconds I have left, barely hanging on as the paramedics arrive, scoop my lifeless body from off the concrete, and carry me to the infirmary, even though my pulse is slowly dying along with the rest of me.
